There is a small subset of users who just love farming any card for hours on end. Most casual users don't fit that category. In April, many of these users from non-feeder regions were at least mildly intrigued when they opened a deck and the 4th card was a nation that they had at least heard of, from their region. Getting one of these in each pack made it more interesting. Even though they hadn't heard of 80% of the nations in their deck, each time they opened a pack they got a nation they knew. Life Was Good. Now, the card game has been re-released. These users might open a handful of packs, get 15 or 20 random cards, a third of them with the same flag or prefix as raider or farming puppet hoardes and lose interest. They don't have the funds to buy the cards they want, the time to farm bank or the ability to pull them from their deck. So why bother with cards?
As a Case Study, with 4 nations and some unknown number of packs, I have since Cards have returned drawn more cards from my primary region with the 2 nations outside the region than with the 2 nations inside the region (0 such cards drawn with these nations). Obviously this was done to prevent region swarming to collect specific cards. But I believe there are ways to prevent region swarming without forcing regional card production to approach 0 - particularly when you talk about the cards that usually get junked anyway - the commons and uncommons.
Solution: Bring back Card #4!
How to do it: Differently. In April, If your nation was in a region classified as "Large" or higher, the 4th card in each new pack you opened would be from that region. Therefore, you could hop from region to region to farm cards from that region - specifically Legendary Cards. This is where we just have to use some math and take that off the table. If the odds of drawing any specific legendary card from a deck were 0.001, then being in the same region as that card would increase those odds to... 0.001. Or 0.001001. Or you might even be so kind as to make it 0.0011. But the key is it shouldn't change much if it all. What should change is the other end of the spectrum. Commons and Uncommons. If you are located in a region, your odds that one of your common or uncommon cards in your deck are from that region should increase to levels near that of those used in April. Rare & Ultra Rare's could have increased odds as well but proportionally smaller. Epic even lower until again, Legendary, virtually no difference if you are in the region or not - likely maintaining whatever the current odds are which seem to be basically none.
But what if someone moves one million farm puppets in to the region to get that 0.0011 chance? Well in addition to the depreciating odds of pulling a specific regional card as card rarity increases, the factor of likelihood should decrease proportionally as length of residency decreases. A nation that has been in a region for 365 days or longer shall receive the full factor. Each day of residency fewer 365 days reduces the factor until it gets to 0 at 90 days. If you aren't in a region for 90 days then you have no "Card 4" factor and your odds of drawing a common card from your region in slot 4 are identical to that of any other common card.
So Many words, say it shorter:
- - Bring Back "Regional Bias" in card decks
- - Additional factor does not apply to Legendary cards; likelihood of drawing a regional card increases exponentially as card rarity decreases
- - Only applicable for nations >90 days residency; >1 year residency for full effect
I believe this proposal provides the optimum balance between allowing Regional Bias in card decks while not permitting a way for "Card Farmer" nations to benefit from region hopping; as well as minimizing any imbalance caused by a nation that might be in a region with multiple high-rarity nation cards.
Furthermore, I believe it is critical that this feature return for Season 2 of NationStates Cards due to the large influx of "NationName 123" Farming Puppets that have been created since the Card Game release which, once included in the Card Game, will further water-down the intrigue of the 'common card base' to the average user and further reduce the likelihood they will ever pull an 'interesting' card from a 'random' deck.
